Australia is wasting resources in Afghanistan: experts

Australia is wasting resources in Afghanistan: experts

Australia's military campaign in Afghanistan is a serious policy failure with no serious prospect of achieving, defense experts said in an interview with Xinhua recently, adding that the on-going spending on the war will constitute a drain on resource.

The comment came following the assassination of former Afghan president and Afghan peace negotiator, Burhanuddin Rabbani. The killing was the latest high-profile attack by insurgents, who are currently engaged in back-channel peace talks with the U.S. via Pakistani intermediaries.

An Australian foreign and defense policy expert at University of Newcastle, Associate Professor Wayne Reynolds, said the recent assassinations and the rising death toll among coalition soldiers indicated the insurgency is gathering pace and sophistication in Afghanistan.

He said it is possible that there is a much broader and uncoordinated insurgency then applying the Taliban label would suggest, and he expected the coalition force will continue to struggle with insurgents, who are motivated not only by opposition to North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) presence, but a plethora of local issues that have been long neglected in the strife-torn nation.

As of the prospects for peace in the country, Professor Reynolds casted a shadow over it, saying that it is considerable diminished by the uncertainty surrounding the profile of the Taliban leadership.

"It is also clear that there is considerable uncertainty about the negotiating framework for peace," he told Xinhua in an interview. "While the elimination by the U.S. and NATO of Taliban leaders suggests a hierarchy it does not seem to extend to intelligence about the chain of command with respect to negotiators."

Meanwhile, former senior Defense Department official and government advisor, Professor Hugh White, said the latest assassination showed that chances of Australian Defense Force completing its objectives in Afghanistan are "very low".

"I don't think we are likely to succeed in preventing the Taliban taking a prominent position. Even if they don't completely overtake Afghan politics, they are going to regain a prominent position there after we leave," he said. "I don't think we are going to succeed in ensuring that Afghanistan doesn't become a kind of destabilizing factor in the wide south Asian strategic balance."

With the barely noticeable process has been done since the coalition force entered Afghanistan in 2001, Professor Reynolds said the occupying force is not only wasting human and financial resources, but also create ongoing co-lateral damage in Afghanistan and increasingly in Pakistan. "The events in Afghanistan suggest that on-going spending on ' boots on the ground' will constitute a drain on resources, and come at the expense of developing other defense options such as aircraft, submarines and industrial infrastructure," he said.

Australia currently has 1,500 troops in Afghanistan, mainly based in Oruzgan Province. So far, 29 Australian soldiers have died and 194 others have been wounded in Afghanistan since 2001.

Since Australia scheduled to hand security arrangements back to Afghanistan from 2014, Professor White said based on recent casualty rates, as many as 40 more Australians could lose their lives in the war before it ends.

"If when we leave in 2014 Afghanistan looks just as it looks today, which I think is the most likely outcome, then it is hard to see that any lives we lose between now and then will not have been lost in vain," he said.

English.news.cn   2011-09-24 21:36:46 FeedbackPrintRSS
By Vienna Ma

CANBERRA, Sept. 24 (Xinhua)